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The question ‘Is Don Draper dead?’ was the theme of multiple sessions at the recently concluded South by South West conference – the underlying question being - now that marketers are looking towards data for answers, have the ‘creative’ members of your marketing team been killed off? We’re here to tell you – not a chance.

Data and creative are not enemies, they need to be best friends. Click to tweet.

It’s an obvious truth that marketing teams are moving/have moved towards data-driven intelligence to better inform their creative strategy. However, the two seemingly opposing roles have the same business objective in mind. If I were to attach an analogy, it’s like putting a blindfolded creative in the driver’s seat telling them to get to Point X, and then getting data in the passenger seat to guide the car to Point X in the most effective route.

The only rules when posting for your brand is ‘don’t be offensive’ and ‘keep innovating.’ If you publish similar posts, with similar pictures and similar campaigns, you’re going to have fans yawning. You have to keep switching it up. That’s where Inspire, our ideating feature on Unmetric comes in!

89%

That, according to Gartner, is the percentage of large companies that will have a Chief Marketing Technologist in place by 2016. If you head up the marketing department of your organization that means you’ve got three quarters to get smart, or get marginalized or maybe even replaced.

SxSW is almost over but hopefully you take three things back home with you - the lessons you’ve learned, the friendships (or business contacts) you’ve made and not to mention all the swag that brands just handed out with reckless abandon!

Back to the show - I’ve been creating these curated schedules as a guide for folks at #SxSW this year, but I also think I should highlight the fact that even if you’re not in Austin, you’re still going to find these guides helpful.

Good morning and welcome to Monday! We’re on to Day 4 of the marathon that is SxSW and according to the tweets from brands and agencies – it has been serious fun! It’s a hard life being able to learn from some of the smartest minds in the business, while getting to party with some of the coolest names in entertainment AND get some seriously sweet swag, but somebody’s gotta do it!

For those of you who are just joining us, I also curated schedules for Days 1, 2 and 3 of Interactive and even though those events are over – I’d like to think that I was able to capture the state of marketing right now through the selection of events and you should definitely check them out. For today’s schedule, I’ve got six events – but four time slots, which in my understanding of math, averages five events that you must attend at Day 4 of SxSW - #flawlessmathlogic.

It’s already Day 3 at SxSW Interactive! For those of you who partied a little too hard last night – we applaud you, drink plenty of water so that the pounding in your head calms down. If you are reading this while already on a 5 mile jog that you’ve managed to squeeze in before breakfast – you are a champion and my role model. If you’ve been following my guides for Day 1 and Day 2 – I hope you’ve had a great South by experience so far! Today’s schedule was a bit of a struggle because as hard as I tried, I couldn’t get it down to only 5 events (I know, I had one job, right?)

So go ahead, grab a cup of coffee, parse through the agenda and get ready for another exciting day! You should also check out the live streamon Ad Age of brands and agencies tweeting #SxSW, powered by Unmetric. Need a little Uptown Funk dance party to get your day started? We got you -

Sifting through the events on Day 2 of South by, I’m amazed, and a little worried about the plethora of struggles faced by the modern marketer today. I gave a loose definition to the term ‘modern marketer’ in my guide to Day 1 at SxSW – but that was just an attempt to address their multiple ROLES. Their responsibilities are even harder to define. From the initial perspective of “All the cool brands are doing it – let’s get on social,” to the present accountability of social media to meet business objectives, it’s hard out there for a marketer!

So here’s a round-up of events from Day 2 that promise to equip you with the tools to overcome these challenges, and make you a lean, mean marketing machine. [You should also check out the live streamon Ad Age of brands and agencies tweeting #SxSW, powered by Unmetric]

Honestly, there are too many events at SxSW to count and just going through the schedule can be trying. Since not everyone should have to spend hours looking through the array of headlines and hashtags taking centre stage in Austin this week, I took it upon myself to go through every single session and curate the ones which I think will standout on Day One into a cheat sheet. The task seemed pretty simple – Cherry pick those events at South by that modern marketers will find valuable. But first, what is a modern marketer?

Well, a modern marketer is an amalgamation of a brand manager, a creative strategist, a storyteller, a data analyst, a social activist, a quick adapter to digital trends and a qualified live tweeter that has to meet business objectives! It isn’t easy to keep up with this evolving term and we know that marketers are constantly striving to stay ahead of the trend and learn important lessons quickly. With that in mind, here are a couple of sessions that we think are perfect for you – the modern marketer.

Not going to SxSW this year? Good for you. The annual event has turned into an over-indulgent slog of bacchanalian debauchery, a veritable technological den of iniquity, that no right-minded marketer would bother with anymore (full disclosure - I can’t wait; I’m probably mid-flight to Austin as you read this).

But just because you won’t be rubbing elbows with the cognoscenti in Austin doesn’t mean you can’t get some real value out of this weekend. In fact, if you play your cards right, you can probably generate a better ROI on your time than most of the folks who’ll be in Texas. So today, for you dear non-SxSW attendee, we present the Anti-SxSW Weekend Guide.

Here’s how the savvy, modern marketer can fill the next couple of days while her friends and colleagues are otherwise occupied eating BBQ, listening to bands, etc.

Marketers, you might want to sit down for this. Very soon, you’ll see the number of ‘Likes’ on your brand’s Facebook Pages change. And not in a good way. Facebook recently announced that they’ve decided to update the way Page Likes are counted by specifically removing memorialized and voluntarily deactivated accounts from your Pages’Like counts.